Comrades, first of all, two brief remarks. Comrade Sapronov continued to reproach me with forgetfulness, but the question he raised, he never actually explained. He kept insisting that the decree on flax procurement is a violation of a decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. I declare that one cannot make such unsubstantiated accusations at a Party Congress, and especially such serious ones. Of course, if the Council of People's Commissars had violated a decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, it would have been subject to prosecution. But why, from February 10 until now, has no complaint been filed to the effect that this decree is a violation? We receive a completely unsubstantiated accusation, which is easy enough to throw around, but these methods of struggle are completely unserious.

Comrade Milyutin says that we have almost no disagreements and that therefore it turns out something like: Lenin is against quarreling and is himself fomenting this quarrel. But Comrade Milyutin is somewhat distorting things, which he should not do. We had a first draft of a resolution, sketched out by Comrade Trotsky, then reworked collectively in the Central Committee. We sent this draft to Comrades Milyutin and Rykov. They returned it to us, saying they would fight against it. That's how it actually was. After we developed our agitation and gained allies, they launched comprehensive opposition at the Congress, but, seeing that nothing came of it, only then began to say they were almost in agreement. Of course, that's so, but one must see the matter through to the end and establish that your agreement means your complete defeat, after the opposition here had come forward and tried to rally around collegialism. When Comrade Milyutin's time ran out, after 15 minutes, he only remembered that it would be good to give the subject a businesslike approach. Absolutely right. But I'm afraid it's too late; although Comrade Rykov still has his concluding remarks, the opposition cannot be saved. If the defenders of collegialism over the past two months had done what they are calling for, had given us even one example – not like: there is one director and one deputy, but had given us a questionnaire with a precise investigation of the matter, with a comparison of collegialism with individual management, as was decided at the Congress of Sovnarkhoz and in the Central Committee – then we would have become much wiser, then at the Congress we would have received not these incongruous principled discussions, then the supporters of collegialism could have advanced the cause. Their position would have been strong if they could really have cited even 10 factories placed under identical conditions and managed according to the principle of collegialism, and compared them in a businesslike manner with the organization of factories managed by individual leaders. Such a report could be given an hour of time from any rapporteur, and that rapporteur would have advanced us far forward; we might perhaps have established practical gradations on this basis of collegialism. But the whole point is that any of them – whether Sovnarkhoz workers or trade unionists – who ought to have had practical material, gave us nothing, because they had nothing. They have nothing – absolutely nothing!

Here Comrade Rykov objected that I want to redo the French Revolution, that I deny that the bourgeoisie grew into the feudal order. I said no such thing. I said that when the bourgeoisie displaced the feudal order, the bourgeoisie took feudal lords and learned from them how to govern, and this is absolutely not contradictory to the bourgeoisie growing into the feudal system. And those theses of mine – that the working class, after seizing power, begins to implement its principles – have absolutely not been refuted by anyone. After seizing power, the working class holds, preserves power and strengthens it, like any class, through changing the relationship to property and by a new constitution. This is my first fundamental thesis, which is indisputable! The second thesis – that every new class learns from the preceding class and takes representatives of administration from the old class – is also an absolute truth. Finally, my third thesis – that the working class must increase the number of administrators from its own ranks, create schools, prepare cadres of workers on a state scale. These three theses are incontrovertible and fundamentally oppose the theses of the trade unions.

I said to Comrade Tomsky in the faction, when we examined their theses, when Comrade Bukharin and I were defeated{112}, I said that in your theses point 7 will remain a mark of complete theoretical confusion. It states:

"The basic principle in the structure of organs of regulation and management of industry, the only one capable of ensuring the participation of broad non-party working masses through the trade unions, is the existing principle of collegial management of industry, from the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the National Economy down to and including factory management. Only in special cases, by mutual agreement of the presidiums of the Supreme Council of the National Economy and the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, or of the Central Committees of the corresponding unions, should individual management of separate enterprises be permitted, provided that trade unions and their organs exercise control over these individual administrators."

This is utter nonsense, because the role of the working class in the conquest of state power, the relationship between methods – everything is muddled! One cannot reconcile oneself with such things! Such things theoretically drag us backward. The same can be said of the democratic centralism of Comrades Sapronov, Maximovsky, and Osinsky. Comrade Osinsky forgets this, putting forth the idea that I call democratic centralism stupidity. One cannot distort things like that! What has the question of appointment and implementation through local organizations got to do with it? One can implement through collegia and one can also appoint collegia. A question posed to no purpose! They say that democratic centralism consists not only in the fact that the All-Russian Central Executive Committee governs, but that it governs through local organizations. What does collegialism or individual management have to do with that?

Comrade Trotsky recalled his 1918 report and, reading the speech he delivered then, pointed out that not only did we dispute fundamental questions then, but a definite decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was adopted. Having dug up my old pamphlet "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government"[12], which I had completely forgotten, I see that the question of individual management was not only raised, but also received approval in the theses of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee[13]. We work in such a way that we forget not only what we write, but also what has been decided by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and then we cite those decisions. Here are excerpts from the pamphlet:

"Conscious (and for the most part, probably unconscious) representatives of petty-bourgeois laxity wished to see a retreat from the principle of collegialism and from democracy and from the principles of Soviet power in the granting to individual persons of 'unlimited' (i.e., dictatorial) authority. Among the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, in some places there developed outright hooliganish, i.e., appealing to base instincts and to petty-proprietor desires to 'grab' their share, agitation against the decree on dictatorship{113}"… "Every large-scale machine industry – i.e., precisely the material, productive source and foundation of socialism – requires absolute and strictest unity of will directing the combined work of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of people. Both technically and economically and historically, the necessity of this is obvious, and it was always recognized by all who thought about socialism as a condition of it" – only thus and "can the strictest unity of will be ensured"…

"But, one way or another, unquestioning obedience to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of labor processes organized according to the type of large-scale machine industry. For railways it is necessary doubly and trebly"…

"And our entire task, the task of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which is the conscious exponent of the striving of the exploited for liberation – is to understand this transformation, grasp its necessity, take the lead of the exhausted and wearily searching masses, lead them along the true path, along the path of labor discipline, along the path of reconciling the tasks of meetings about working conditions with the tasks of unquestioning obedience to the will of the Soviet leader, the dictator, during work"…

"What was needed was precisely the October victory of the working people over the exploiters, what was needed was an entire historical period of preliminary discussion by the working people themselves of the new conditions of life and new tasks, in order to make possible a firm transition to higher forms of labor discipline, to the conscious assimilation of the idea of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to unquestioning obedience to the individual orders of representatives of Soviet power during work"…

"We must learn to combine together the turbulent, overflowing like a spring flood, bursting from all banks, meeting-democracy of the working masses with iron discipline during work, with unquestioning obedience to the will of one person, the Soviet leader, during work"[14].

On April 29, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution expressing complete approval of the fundamental theses set forth in this report, and instructed its Presidium to edit these fundamental theses in the form of theses as the basic tasks of Soviet power. Thus we are repeating what two years ago in an official resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was approved! And now they are dragging us backward on a question long decided, a question that the All-Russian Central Executive Committee affirmed and clarified – namely, that Soviet socialist democracy is in no way contradictory to individual management and dictatorship, that the will of the class is sometimes carried out by a dictator, who sometimes alone will accomplish more and is often more necessary. In any case, the principled relationship to collegialism, to individual management was not only clarified long ago, but affirmed by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In this respect our Congress demonstrates the sad truth that instead of moving forward from the clarification of principled questions to concrete ones, we are moving forward like a crab. If we do not get rid of this mistake, we will not solve the economic task.

I still wanted to say a couple of words regarding some remarks of Comrade Rykov. He asserts that the Council of People's Commissars is hindering the unification of economic commissariats, and when they say that Comrade Rykov wants to devour Comrade Tsyurupa, he replies: "I have nothing against Tsyurupa devouring me, if only the economic commissariats are unified." I know where this leads, and I must say that the attempt of the Supreme Council of the National Economy to establish itself in some separate bloc of economic commissariats outside the Council of Defense and the Council of People's Commissars was not overlooked by the Central Committee and provoked a negative attitude. Now the Council of Defense has been renamed the Council of Labor and Defense. You want to separate yourselves from the military commissariat, which gives its best forces to the war, which is such an institution that you cannot carry out labor conscription without it, and we cannot carry out labor conscription without the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. If we take the post, we cannot send letters without the Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs. Take the People's Commissariat of Health. How will you conduct the economy when 70% have typhus? It turns out that for us every matter needs to be coordinated and singled out into an economic commissariat. This is a plan that makes no sense whatsoever! Comrade Rykov had no serious basis for this! Therefore we fought against it, and the Central Committee did not support it.

Further, Comrade Rykov joked about a bloc with Comrade Goltzman, which is supposedly being arranged by Comrade Trotsky. I wanted to say a few words – that there always needs to be a bloc between Party groups that are right. This should always be an obligatory condition for correct policy. If Comrade Goltzman, whom I unfortunately know little about, but about whom I have heard as a representative of a current among metalworkers, particularly insisting on the application of rational methods – which is emphasized in my theses – if from this point of view he insists on individual management, then this of course can only be extremely useful. A bloc with this current would be extremely beneficial. If the representation of professional unions in the Central Committee is strengthened, then it will be useful to have representatives of this current in it too – even if in some respects incorrect, but original, having a certain character, alongside the extreme representatives of collegialism, who fight in the name of democracy and are mistaken. Let both sides be represented in the Central Committee – and there will be a bloc. Let the Central Committee be so constituted that through a bloc it will be possible to find a field for operations the whole year round, and not just during the week of the Party Congress. We have constantly rejected the principle of regional representation, since there is much regional cronyism in that. When it is necessary to merge more firmly with the professional unions, we need to follow every shade of the professional unions, we need to have connections – it is inevitable that the Central Committee be constituted in such a way that with the broad masses of professional unions (we have 600,000 Party members and 3,000,000 members of professional unions) there is a transmission belt that links the Central Committee simultaneously with the single will of 600,000 Party members and 3,000,000 members of professional unions. Without this transmission belt we cannot govern. The more we conquered Siberia, the Kuban, and Ukraine with their peasant populations, the more difficult the task became, the heavier the machine runs, because there are few proletarians in Siberia, and on Ukraine they are weaker. But we know that the Donetsk and Nikolayev workers gave direct resistance to the defense of the semi-demagogical collegialism into which Comrade Sapronov had fallen. There is no doubt that the proletarian element in Ukraine is different from that in Petrograd, Moscow, and Ivanovo-Voznesensk, and not because it is bad, but from purely historical circumstances. It has not had occasion to be tempered as much in hunger, cold, and struggle as the Moscow and Petrograd proletarians were. Therefore we need such a connection with professional unions, such an organization of the Central Committee that it knows the shades of not only 600,000 Party members but 3,000,000 members of professional unions, so that it can lead everyone at any moment as one person! Such an organization is necessary! This is the basic political interest, without which the dictatorship of the proletariat will not be a dictatorship. A bloc, then a bloc! Do not fear it, but welcome it and realize it more firmly and broadly in the most central institutions of the Party!